


The Expats

by jamnesias



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Deliberately vague plot, Fake Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Implied Relationships, M/M, POV Changes, Past Drug Use, Post Reichenbach, Rowing, Siblings, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-14 12:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamnesias/pseuds/jamnesias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'After Sherlock is— dead, Sherlock is dead— John is fine.'</p><p>Only he's not, obviously. The year and a bit of what happens after the Fall. John and Sherlock's lives, running parallel, switching perspective, until they converge again. Written pre-season 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I make no promises that this will contain a) actual plot or b) a proper and concise explanation of how he faked his death. I have my own ideas but they change a lot. This story came out of nowhere and I just ran with it - in reality I don't think this is how it will actually have happened at all, but it was fun. 
> 
> Many thanks to thegirlthatisclumsy for the beta work!

_Opened my eyes_ _had a dream last night  
_

 _that both my arms were broken_

 [Rain City,Turin Brakes]

 

 

* * *

**February 2012**

After Sherlock is— dead, Sherlock is _dead—_  John is fine.

He has lost colleagues before. Lost is the wrong word, of course. More fitting would be ‘tried to hold bits of them together and failed’. Or watched them step into a situation that they could not survive and then leave it, abruptly. Bodies peeling open like flowers. Draining, bleaching—  

No, the point is— the point is, he explains when he cancels his therapy sessions after two weeks, that he lost a lot of friends and acquaintances before, whilst he was serving, and he got on with it, and he is getting on with this. He is all right. Dealing with the shattering of someone else is much easier than dealing with himself. He isn’t sure what that says about him, but he won’t be discussing it with his therapist anymore, so he is unlikely to find out. Not a problem.

Mycroft sent a car for he and Mrs Hudson, for the funeral, and he had found he could not sit in it. Grey leather interior and a cool-eyed driver. He’d put Mrs Hudson in the back, patted her shoulder and nodded to the driver, and set off walking to the church instead. And his leg hadn’t trembled once. His pace had been perfect. Even. Rhythmic. He’d made very good time.

He is fine.

He decides to move out of 221b in March, on principle, and nausea, but somehow he doesn’t want to go far. Circling back like a lost animal or a child – but he had _found_ something, a place he suited, _his_ place. He doesn’t want to give it up entirely and _damn_ that thought, why should he distance himself—

Mrs Hudson offers him the basement flat in the building.

The damp has been cleared and it was newly done up by workmen around the time of the Moriarty. Moriarty _shit._ It’s clean, new, and suits him.

John carries down three boxes of his things, and then somehow cannot be bothered to go back up for the rest. They are leaving the rooms upstairs as are, for now, though half of it is boxed up; Mycroft is continuing to pay what was Sherlock’s rent. Mrs Hudson had told John that morning. He had thought and thought about this, distracted whilst packing, and he wants to think about it further now. It feels like something, an aching, instinctual _something_ , telling him to pay attention - but it is dulled by residual shock and apathy. Like ringing in his ears. Drowned out by his distraction and _pain—_  it is too painful, yet, to want to investigate something. To follow a light, a lead. To even consider wading into the minefield that would be visiting Mycroft to talk about his brother’s legacy.

To even consider the violence he might trigger by allowing himself to be near Mycroft.

John lays on his new, unused sofa with a hand over his eyes and the BBC 24 hour news on in the background, and dozes off. He dreams of Afghanistan, except that his uniform is different, archaic, with double breasted buttons and colours like red and darkest blue, and he and the other soldiers simply march into sunlight that flares and blinds them. They simply step into it, and drop. Falling into hidden banks and holes of quicksand and dust, and being swallowed up. They step into graves.

Sherlock had just stepped into the air. He’d stepped, dropped, fallen, and then there’d been nothing. John hadn’t seen the impact, and he’d barely heard a sound. The pavement didn’t ripple or crack, the air didn’t shudder. It wasn’t an explosion and it wasn’t a war. If it was, he’d lost. Civilian life is his to enjoy, even if a local inspector regularly tries to take him to the pub and a high ranking government official keeps unsubtly tailing him.

His leg is steady.

He is fine.

 

* * *

**February 2012**

Waking up dead is a definitely an experience Sherlock cannot say he’s had before.

It’s not that smooth, or simple, of course; in fact he comes to very, very slowly, with a tickling and prickling like nettle rash in his limbs and behind his eyes. His mind takes some time to sharpen, blooming gradually along with the awareness of pain, before— suddenly everything, _everything,_ he’s _there_ in his body all in a rush, all flooding in - the heavy silence, the sheet clinging to his face and chest, his itchy hair and the infernal instinct to flail, to sit up, to _panic—_

He forces himself to stay still. Forces it down. One cannot panic when one has planned something perfectly. Even if it is the final end he’d most wished against.

After a time, he opens his eyes under the blanket. Just to try them out. His eyelashes are stuck together. The morgue has no lights on, but feels naturally dark – it’s night-time then. He’s bare chested but still has trousers on. He coughs once when he’s sure the room is empty, then makes himself breathe slowly, shallowly. He won’t be strong for a while, so Molly will come to help him, using the pretence of grief and her access to the morgue to quietly work on her friend’s body. His mouth tastes like rust - he bit his tongue when he landed in the back of the truck and the other blood that exploded across his face has dried flaky in his hair, stiff in his eyebrows. He wasn’t expecting to wake up with quite so much on him still, even if the plan had been to wake up before his ‘body’ is cleaned.

They might have wiped it off. Really.

His throat is sore. He ignores it, waiting for Molly – who shouldn’t be long – and testing his limbs as they wake up. Tingling like static in his fingertips. A soreness in his ribs where the back of the truck was padded, but not entirely enough. An ache above the elbow on one arm from three needles: one to take his blood (stock levels were checked too carefully in the hospital, and it was a deplorably obvious trail to leave) for the bag that had sat inside the collar of his coat, ready to explode on impact and drench his hair and face, one for the injection of drugs that had slowed his heart to an imperceptible beat, and another in the same spot from the A&E doctors’ IV.  (He had hypothesised that they might not bother, if he could appear lifeless enough, but hoped that they would; an emergency nurse would be unlikely to notice a fresh needle mark in a rush to attach an IV, and the new needle mark would cover the old if anyone took the time to truly examine him.)

If he hadn’t needed to use the blood he was going to donate it. John would have approved of this, he felt.

Of course, what of the action of sliding a needle in? Oh yes, it had made him feel a little sick. The _echo_ of the action. Doing it in front of Molly, too, how loathsome - even if she had politely and awkwardly busied herself doing something else. He wondered, had it not come to this, to his 'suicide', would the telltale need for long sleeves have set alarm bells ringing for John? Even in winter?  A small part of his mind had imagined it. Oddly hoped for it. The track mark would have been tiresome to explain, so he would have had to tell the truth – but could he have, truly, _could_ he have explained this plan? Could he have put it into the correct words?

John would never have agreed to it. Or would have wished to take his place. His loyalty and fury are so interchangeable sometimes. Sherlock can’t be sure.

He also isn’t sure _how_ he’s going to explain it, when he’s back. He knows the reasoning and the facts, but—but John’s _face--_

There is a quiet thud. The door has opened, then closed. Someone approaches.

He holds still. Of course, if this isn’t Molly then how long can he possibly expect to continue playing _dead_ \-- but then he smells her perfume over the clinical chlorine and bleach.

 “Sherlock?" she breathes, reaching over to peel the sheet down to his nose. Slowly revealed: staring down at him with her mouth open.

He waits.

Waits.

“...Molly,” he says, muffled by the fabric still over his mouth, “could you—”

“Oh!” She jumps and yanks the sheet down, apologising, then flushing when she reveals his bare chest. “Sorry, I—” She shakes her head and then jumps in as he starts to push himself up, wobbly, to hook her arms under his and gently helping to pull him up into a sitting position. “Bit…strange.” 

He rolls his eyes, batting her away. “Yes, I’m sure it’s every morgue attendant’s nightmare.”

Sitting now, he draws breaths, feeling the room stop spinning and settle. Strength returns, and with it, equilibrium. He lifts his arms, draws his knees up.

Molly watches him all the while with a sort of hysterical expression which he pointedly ignores.

“Are you," she finally asks. "Um. Are you all right?”

He ignores that too, pushing the sheet down to his feet, then twists on the bench very slowly to lower himself to the floor. Then looks down.

He only has one shoe on.

They cut his shirt off, but left him with one shoe?

Honestly, the NHS.

“I’m fine,” he says, firmly. He wants the sink; where is it? The wall of metallic cabinets that hold the bodies is so shiny that he can see himself reflected perfectly in it as he searches; a blur of dark and his white chest, brown dried blood splattered across his face and throat. There is another body two benches up from him. Molly is very pale. Also, he needs to wash, because the blood has dried stiff in his hair and eyelashes _and_ it’s getting in his teeth. He has to wash, now.

There. Sherlock crosses the room and turns the tap on, shoving his head under the stream of water. It soaks him immediately, flushing through his hair. He lets it run over his head and ears and down his neck, startlingly cold over his chest and splashing the floor. A joy, to block out everything for a moment with foaming water, with a rushing, white noise. He is only there for a moment--  or, perhaps not, as when he surfaces Molly has come to stand next to him without him even realising. She is holding a towel.

He wipes the hair off his forehead and takes it.

“Thank you.”

She smiles, a gentle lift of half of her mouth. “Of course,” she says, and he-- is struck by her. Blame the lack of blood, the murky mix of drugs and adrenaline in his system, or perhaps something so banal and obvious as fear, and  _sorrow_ , but she is an incongruous wonder, for a moment. Completely unexpected. Her old white coat. She helped him. She _surprised_ him.

He puts a hand on her arm. She looks down at it, then back up.

“I want to thank you before I forget. And I must… I want to apologise for you having to get involved.”

She is staring at him. His wet hand soaks through her coat; he can feel her skin underneath. Then she laughs loudly once and steps backwards.

“Okay, no. No. Semi-naked, officially dead: fine. But apologising to me is just. No.” She sits heavily on the stool she has backed into, making it squeak against the tiled floor. “Shut up, Sherlock.”

He nods, then towels his hair. That’s fair enough.

He dress from the package of grubby clothes he’d left for himself, layering himself up for the cold, then applies the prosthetics and make-up quickly. Soon he appears older and filthy. The stench of unwashed clothes and piss that Molly created for him in the lab is wonderful. He sprays it on and immediately becomes an old, homeless man. A no-one.

He checks the clock. 4.16am and he’s ready to slip out the back of the hospital as planned.

Molly has her elbow on the bench and her chin propped on her hand, idly watching him even though her eyes are drooping. He wants to lay down and sleep as well but he will do so when he’s homeless, invisible in his network. Not now. It’s the adrenaline draining from her. Realisation creeping in, over what she’s done.

What he’s done.

“Everything is ready?” he asks quietly.

Molly nods. “Oh yes. All ready.” She glances up at him through her eyelashes, dazed. “I’ll replace your body with the...the replacement.”

He nods. “Perfect.”

She _mm-hmms_. “Perfect.”

Time to go.

Except.

“My brother will come in to confirm his suspicions,” he says. She sits up, snapping to attention. “You can be honest with him.”

“…Okay.”

“And John. He will too.” He stares at her pointedly. “Please continue to lie to him.”

She lifts her chin. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t pause; he cannot. “Yes, Molly, as you know. Do not tell him anything. He can. Not. Know.”

She is considering him too closely - her eyes look large and watery. It’s unattractive, like a puddle. Or the threat of a storm. The air feels muggy, heavy, claustrophobic, and he’s hot in these smelly, dirty layers. If she cries he will be _sick_.

 **“** Okay, Sherlock.” She tucks her hair behind her ear and nods again. “All right.”

He opens the door, and goes.


	2. Chapter 2

**late April 2012**

The sounds of Saturday Kitchen are an easy background noise when John wakes up, right in the middle of the bed with his feet hanging off the end.  He’d fallen asleep with the telly on.

He blinks, blinks, pushes himself up.

Blearily, he pours himself a tea. It’s pleasant, mornings like this; he has nothing on and he can think about nothing, really. Nothing at all. Time passes, it's peaceful. Then Mrs Hudson gives a little warbling scream from outside and something _thumps_ down the stairs, crashes into the hall.

John leaps from the kitchen, knocking the mug to the floor, and throws open the door with his blood roaring in his ears, the _scream_ —

He pulls up short.

There is a rowing machine upside down outside his door.

Mrs Hudson is standing on the middle landing with her hands over her mouth.

“John!” she says, and starts coming down the stairs towards him. “Oh I am _sorry_ , it—it got away from me.”

John raises his eyebrows, climbing over the rowing machine towards her. “Are you all right?”

She waves a hand. “I’m fine, it’s just a little, um—”

“Massive?” John offers.

She laughs. “Yes, yes it is a bit.”

“Why on earth,” John asks, “are you trying to lug a rowing machine upstairs? No, no, ignore that – why do you _have_ a rowing machine?”

She sighs. “My nephew.”

John raises his eyebrows, and invites her in for a cuppa.

He lets her bustle around helping him clean up the shards of his own mug whilst she explains. Her nephew is moving from London to Wales with his girlfriend who has pointed out, quite rightly, that he hasn’t used his rowing machine since he was an optimistic 21 year old and now, at 30, he should probably admit that he likes watching TV more than exercising and there is no _way_ that they are paying to get that in a moving van, anyway. He has panicked and dumped it with his dear Aunt to sort out this morning, and she was seeing if it would be possible to drag it through her door at least, since it was blocking the hall.

Obviously it was not, no.

 John takes a moment to be worried that he didn’t register any of the noise before the crash ( _Was he asleep? Or just not listening?_ ) then shakes his head.

“You should have asked me, what were you thinking?”

Mrs Hudson goes still, looking at him with the dustpan in her hands, then shrugs with a gentle smile. “I didn’t want to disturb you, John.”

He feels terrible. He feels as though he physically _deflates,_ crumpling a little in his dressing gown. “Mrs Hudson.” He puts the shards in his hands on the side, takes the dustpan out of hers and then takes her hands in his. “You should have asked me. It’s...” He clears his throat. “I’m okay.”

She smiles at him, sadly. Immediately he wants to counter her pity, so he gives her his stern doctor face.

“I can’t _believe_ you tried to move that on your own.”

She just laughs at him, then sniffs and pats his hand.

“Yes yes, going up against simple physics. Sherlock would never have let me hear the end of it.”

And so of course, because he is a bloody fool, John ends up with the rowing machine.

He drags it in through his door whilst Mrs Hudson faffs around, trying to help, and gets it into the corner by the window before falling back on the sofa once she’s gone. He looks at it. It’s a little rusted in the winding mechanism, the seat looks desperately uncomfortable and it’s not as sleek as the modern ones, but it reminds him of one they had on his army base when he was training. He’ll put an ad up for it on gumtree under collection only, and hold onto it for a couple of days until someone comes to collect it.

The ad never quite makes it onto the page.

He tests it once, out of curiosity, and it makes a horrible ticking noise and crunches at the end. By lunchtime he has it on its side, the cover off the winch, oiling and repairing the mechanism.  He ought to at least fix it before selling it, surely?

He used to take apart everything in their house as a kid; spent hours playing games in the garage with his mates, playing with old radios, clocks, his Dad’s collection of muddled up screws in tiny drawers. He always enjoyed understanding how things work, then putting them back together. He became good at it, even - but machines don’t move or really change. They just disintegrate over time, or continue to tick, tick on. John likes personality. Always liked personality more than anything else, really. Spark, wit. _You want a girl with_ **_balls_** , _Johnny,_ Harry once told him, then laughed and laughed and laughed at her own joke.

_(You **machine** without feelings—)_

John likes helping people. He can’t ignore someone in pain, or leave someone behind. A charmer, a loyal bugger, a good soul, an angel; he’s been called all of these by friends and patients. But no-one has ever talked about the _rush_. The power. It took a lot of experience for John to understand that some doctors are terrified of the pressure of having a life in their hands, and others crave it. The control. The feeling of a pulse beating right up against your fingers. Fragile, terrifying work. The most rewarding crash of defiant _life._ It’s a little bit of pride and a little bit of ego. John is a gifted and conscientious medic, and he is also a natural marksman. A crack shot. He is equally skilled at saving and ending lives.

That juxtaposition took a long time to resolve itself, for him. The need and ability he has for utter focus, total control, whilst pandemonium takes place around him.

Sherlock would have understood. He’d probably worked it all out already, with notes.

But Sherlock is dead.

Two hours later when John sits on the machine to test it, it glides perfectly, like a swan across the Thames. He feels a sort of satisfaction that he hasn’t for a while, and goes out for lunch.

By the end of May he is doing twenty minutes every morning. It twinged his shoulder to start with, where it was stiff with disuse and had tightened up around the scar as if protecting it, but the rhythm of it is helping. Back, forth. Back, forth. His scapula and rotator cuff relax, the muscle is starting to strengthen. His own doctor’s advice was to take up exercise like this but after disregarding it all, he hadn’t needed to then anyway, because he was running around London after criminals.

Now that he isn’t anymore, he oddly misses marching. He isn’t good at sitting still.

Back, forth. Back, forth. He is too old to take it up, really, and too damaged; his biceps burn, his knee clicks when he starts and an ache spreads across his thigh that he _knows_ is all in his head, but it still feels cold.

Yet he improves.

Holding onto the handle keeps his hands steady. Pulling, pushing. The rhythm is grounding; with it in the background he can let his mind wander. It lets him indulge. He starts to look forward to it.

Soon he’s gone through most of their first year, and is up to the first time Sherlock voluntarily cooked something for him and left it ready for when he got in from seeing an old school friend – when he was so surprised at the plate of steaming food on the kitchen table that he stood in the hallway looking between it and Sherlock for a moment.

 _Do you need me to shoot someone for you again?_ he’d asked, and Sherlock had snorted.

 _Inevitably, yes. Currently, no. It’s already salted the way you like,_ as John was reaching for the salt,  _four shakes over the top and one in your palm to sprinkle on by hand. Don’t bother._

 John had stared further. That _man _—__

Absently, he notices one morning when he steps out of the shower that his shoulder has filled out some. It’s firmer around his collarbone where the muscle had caved in around the scar. He’s still got his middle-aged paunch and he knows that he looks like he hasn’t slept for twenty years, yeah - which actually doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to him _not being able to_ when ‘concerned friends’ point it out - but that change notices. He’s small, but his shoulders are wide.

 _You_ _'_ _re gonna be built like your Daddy_ , his Mum had told him when he was eleven and had asked her outright if he could skive school that day because they were starting rugby in PE, and it was just going to be a terrible, terrible disaster because everyone had at least an inch on him already. _You just_ _wait and see, my boy. Just wait and see._

She was right. The first proper leave he had home from the Army it was a hot summer afternoon and he’d had to get 3 buses to their parents’ house in full uniform, so after Mum had cried and patted his cheek, he’d promptly shed every layer of clothing down to his vest and leaned against the sink in the kitchen as she poured him a lemonade. Harry came banging in, dropping her bag in the hall on the way like she did when they were kids, babbling about traffic being shite - and stopped when she saw him, her mouth a perfect _O_ of surprise.

 _Johnny Bravo_ , she'd laughed, shaking her head, and after she’d hugged him she yelled and leapt onto his back, and made him run around the garden with her. Her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist. She’s taller than him, and fidgety, and _bossy_ , so she couldn’t leave off directing him. They inevitably overbalanced and collapsed halfway around into mum’s flowerbed. But his physical strength could have carried her for miles.

He’s still carrying her now, really.

It took him years to realise that she was already drunk, that day.

Back, forth.

Back, forth.

He gets faster.

Mrs Hudson corners him in the hall in June and asks him with a shrewd look if he’s managed to sell the machine. John pauses with his mouth open, then gives her £50.

She laughs, and pushes it up her sleeve. Then she gives him a lookover and nods.

“Don’t carry on too late with it though, love,” she says. “I can hear the mechanism from upstairs.”

He oils it again that night until it is as silent as a whisper.

It becomes part of his day, until he can go longer, and longer. He likes it. He doesn’t have to worry about anything expect the pace. It’s like white noise. He goes-- somewhere else. Zones out, glides back through moments, memories; through what he’s missing, retracing what they did, trying to understand what he’d _missed_. Coming up with nothing. Thinking about nothing. Going on.

Back, forth. **  
**

* * *

**June 2012**

Sherlock has to return to London four months after his suicide.

The anniversary ticks over whilst he is crammed into a crate that Mycroft has arranged to come through customs and conveniently be lost upon arrival at Heathrow.

 _We do not tolerate the system’s flaws_ , he once told Sherlock. _We create them_.

Sherlock is following a fifteen year old boy home from Hong Kong for a school break, because he is the son of someone Sherlock may have to kill. The boy is fastidiously neat and prim and _tiny_ , too tiny for fifteen, and Sherlock feels some pity for him as John would have felt pity for him, as he stammers his way through border control at the airport. Sherlock watches from a McDonalds courtyard and reminds himself of everything that he has learned about the boy’s father: the connections to Moriarty, the malicious and somehow consistently overlooked calling card of heroin at any crime scene to implicate his victim, the messy murders. The _money_. When the boy drops his passport Sherlock wants to roll his eyes, slurps noisily and obviously at his Coke instead.

This child is a bird in a nest of thorns. A cuckoo child, perhaps - one would never believe that he was related to the man. Yet he _is_. There are the same genetic tags; the peculiar collections of moles down the arms, the heterochromia. Another of John’s bloody mysteries of the universe, he supposes. Another mystery of family.

Sherlock catches a glimpse of himself in the reflective glass of the McDonalds window when he leaves to follow - his freshly dyed red hair slicked back, the white linen suit jacket bought to play the quintessential rich man - and is reminded forcibly of his own.

Not so much a self portrait as a deliberately poor send-up, though.

In the dark rain on the runway, Sherlock’s jacket is ruined and he cannot see what is in the rest of the delivery before Mycroft’s associate seals him inside his own crate. It is empty, other than bubble wrap,  and big enough to turn around in, so he sets himself a schedule for movement to avoid DVT and then lets his mind drift, unhindered. It’s an attempt to quell unusual nerves at returning to England. He has already been so many characters in the last four months that being on his own, being entirely himself for a time, is already strange.

He lays very still during the trip, turning to a set rhythm, stretching, going motionless and then repeating. Slowly, he feels himself go hard, expressionless. Glaze over. When the plane lands for its stopover and he is jolted in the crate, he thinks abruptly of ancient teapots, Soo Yin’s black hair across her face, cracked pottery. There is a sick, watery feeling in his stomach. How many cases were connected to Moriarty, in the end? He lets himself admit the feelings of exhaustion, of fragility, and the longing he has for a break or a relief from the case, already— then rolls over and makes himself fall asleep.

Hours later: bumps, shuffles and movement, and he is loaded onto a lorry.

He can tell that it is a 2008 Ford Transit by the engine, and that it needs a service by the rhythmic knock when they turn left, audible even over the rain drumming on the roof. After an hour of tracking the roads he knows that they are near Borough market when they stop, and then Mycroft cracks opens the crate lid.

The lighting is poor – in the moment that they regard one another Sherlock notes that this is because it hasn’t been changed since the place was built in the 1950s, of course  - but it still makes Sherlock blink.

Mycroft looks down at him. The crowbar looks incongruous in his hands.

 “…Reduced to red hair already?” Mycroft murmurs.

Sherlock frowns at him, and stands up. Both of his knees crack. “Needs must.”

Mycroft has lost 9 pounds. His assistant is nowhere to be seen, but that does not necessarily mean that she isn’t around somewhere; instead there is another suited anonymous man opening two other crates identical to Sherlock’s. Mycroft hands Sherlock a bottle of water and Sherlock goes to drink, then pauses with the bottle at his lips - distracted by the reveal of what was in the delivery he came with.

Olympic themed Union Jack umbrellas.

He goes very still, then turns to slit his eyes at his brother. Oh he can read the unspoken message, the sheer bloody cheek, the sheer _vitriol_ of it.

“You did…know, Mycroft.”

Mycroft sniffs, refastening a button on his cuff. “I was able to work it out, yes. Happily I am the only person on this Earth able to make the leaps of logic that you blindly do.” He fixes Sherlock with a look. “A note of some sort might have been useful though, dear brother.”

Sherlock pauses, then drains the bottle of water. His throat has closed.

“Whoops.” This is all he can think to say.

Mycroft hisses, physically _hisses_ at him - then sighs, and proffers his arm to help Sherlock step out of the box. He waits as Sherlocks takes his arm and climbs out, watches him smooth his jacket down when he is.

“We wrong one another often enough,” Mycroft says. “Look how well we survive. ”

Sherlock has heard his brother’s name coming up a lot recently, in connection with some of Moriarty’s time locked away. He now understands.

He receives a set of fresh clothes from Mycroft’s assistant, waiting at one of two cars, before she points at the other. Mycroft climbs into the back of the first.

Sherlock tests the word on his tongue, then gives in.

“John,” he asks.

Mycroft crosses his legs and folds his hands neatly in his lap.

“I identified your body so that he didn't have to, let him know it was done. He’s moved into the basement flat and somehow procured a rowing machine. My analysts call it Post Traumatic Stress.”

The engine starts - Mycroft leans over to shut his door, but he also touches Sherlock’s arm for a second, the briefest pressure. Sherlock's mind stutters at the touch from thinking many things, skips instead to layers of clothing, whorls of fingerprints, identity, his brother's unique ability to strike or touch Sherlock, things that are tangible or too far away to lay hands on— Half a second of consideration whilst he fixes his gaze on Mycroft.

His brother has lifted an eyebrow.

“I think we know better though, hmm?” he says. Then drives away.

Git.

Sherlock is in London for just under five hours, then boards a plane for Cuba under an entirely new name.


	3. Chapter 3

**August 2012**

Summer comes after the Olympics have finished, their presence still littered across London. John avoids the unprecedented heatwave in his nice, cool basement flat.

August is the six month milestone. It dredges up some articles and the Press bothering him, and Mycroft waiting in a car outside with the door open and not wearing, for the first time that John has ever seen, a suit jacket - just a shirt and a waistcoat, his sleeves rolled up in actual acknowledgement of the heat.

“I thought you were cold blooded,” John says, shutting the front door.  

Mycroft gets out of the car. “Most days,” he says, but John walks straight past and knows without looking that Mycroft stops, folds his arms and leans back against the car to watch him turn the corner, watch him out of sight.

He is back working at the clinic some days, transcribing his dreams and what he did with Sherlock in the evenings. He deleted the blog and he doesn’t regret it, but actually writing it up again, going back over it is less painful than he had expected. It’s a way of reaffirming that it actually happened. Sherlock is already drifting away from him like smoke. A man walked past him on The Strand last week wearing the same aftershave as Sherlock used to and he’d, he’d _forgotten._ The man might as well have punched him. He had to veer aside and lose himself in the crowd and noise outside the Zimbabwean Embassy, leaning against a wall until things stopped spinning.

He writes what happened in his normal style, re-transcribing the memories, but sometimes he puts in pure fantasies as well. Tangles them up together. _~~He wrenched the coat off me, and asked if I was alright, was I alright? When he put his hands on my face they were shaking.~~ _ And how quickly things have come to this; how quickly he is starting to think it couldn’t have been real, is it too fantastic, did he _really_ \--

He keeps the lies in a book, a diary of sorts, locked in a drawer in the bedroom. The rest is on his laptop, along with all of the news articles and evidence he can remember of what Moriarty did. What Sherlock did. Moriarty strapped a bomb to him, smiled in a courtyard, and had his brains blown out on a rooftop. There are gaps that are driving him crazy.

He finds he writes more by hand. Ideas, hypotheses. Writing it by hand is more satisfying, somehow, than typing it up like he did before. It is also different, and therefore an important segregation between then, and now. Too similar would be like wallowing. He hates bloody _wallowing._

Aside from a haircut and managing to burn pasta, last week – and truly, who manages to burn _pasta –_ nothing interesting happens to him at all.

2am on a hot Sunday morning, his buzzer goes, the sound grabbing him by the shoulders and yanking him awake from a heavy doze. He gets out of bed, pulls on pyjama bottoms and a grubby t-shirt, calmly gets his pistol and opens the door with it raised to find-- Greg.

To his credit, or perhaps dishonour, Greg doesn’t flinch at the gun. This either means that he expected it, which should be worrying, or that he simply doesn’t mind guns in his face anymore. John is friendly with that sort of apathy. It’s really quite freeing.

He lowers his gun, seeing that Greg has an apologetic grimace.

Then he notices the warm, furry body under Greg’s arm, wrapped in an orange (shock) blanket.

It’s a puppy. Alternately drooling on and chewing Greg’s fingers, somewhere between asleep and concussed.

John looks down, then up, then down at it again.

“Sorry,” Greg starts. “Sorry, this is a one-off.”

It was found abandoned in a flat in Muswell Hill after a drugs bust; a half grown boxer-cross with some other breed in there that John can’t identify, somehow squat and skinny at the same time, with scars all across his broad neck. It had barked and growled and run at the police that kicked the door in with all of the energy that it had left, then pissed itself in terror and passed out.

He and Greg haven’t spoken much. Since. Just a drink at the wake, another three months ago at the pub that was stiff and mostly unpleasant, and that was really his own fault, he knows. John is either furious at him, or disappointed, or just. Bored, _bored_ of it. Reminders of shortcomings and failings and things to avoid.

“Look,” Greg continues, in a rush as if this will help, “he’s evidence, of a sort; we think he ate some experimental MDMA – don’t ask, the vet can’t tell if it’s that or he’s just completely _loopy_ – and someone has to observe him but no-one at the vets will and no-one on the force could take him. I couldn’t either. My kids have allergies.” Greg looks down with evident fondness already at the dazed little thing dribbling all over his wrist, scritches the folds of fur behind its ears.

He is a good police officer, but he shows far too much in his face, John thinks, not for the first time.

“He’s dopey and seems fine,” he says. “But. …”  He shrugs at John. He’s so _awkward_ , shifting, which is somewhat ridiculous because he is also bullish and unsubtle and had the balls to come over at this time with a puppy to try and distract John from mourning – oh he can _tell_ , yeah, thanks.

Greg must see some of that in John’s face because he winces a little. “I thought I should just give it try,” he adds.

Great.

John sighs and rubs his face tiredly, hitching his pyjama bottoms up with one hand where they’re falling down. The dog is smaller than it should be, surely; its legs are too short or its body is too long, something. Its fur is such a dark brown as to be almost black. The fresher wounds on its neck have been patched up by a vet, the older ones from teeth and chains biting in have turned to ropy, knotted flesh. They sting just to look at. He reaches out and takes one of its soft ears between his thumb and forefinger, rubs gently. The puppy huffs, twitches in his sleep.

“…How long?”

“Few days.”

“I’m at the clinic Tuesday, that won’t work.”

“You don’t do full days though, right? He’ll adapt.” Greg is watching him, intently. “He was on his own for a long time anyway.”

John raises his eyebrows, sharply. “So probably best I _don’t_ leave him then, no? Mrs Hudson just had this place done up, Greg, what if he tears it to bits whilst I’m out?”

“He’ll adapt,” Greg repeats. “It’s just a little while. Check he doesn’t puke up anything exciting or start blowing bubbles; if not, we can take him to be rehomed.”

John curls his fingers reflexively where they are bunched at his hip, holding his PJs up. Curls them again.

“Okay, fine. Give him to me.”

They transfer the puppy. The jostling causes it to open bright blue eyes for a second, startling, wolfish, before they roll back in its head and it goes back to sleep, twisted up against John's chest.

“Thanks." Greg hesitates, slaps his shoulder. “Thanks, that's great.”

Tuesday afternoon the heat climbs into the 30s and permeates even his basement flat with every window open that a thief can’t get through. John pushes the door after work to find quiet, still warmth and the puppy - _still_ sleeping. Rolled on its back on the sofa with legs akimbo and lips wobbling as it breathes.

At least there’s been no crying or whining for the last couple of nights. It just sleeps, wakes up, drinks water and suspiciously chews whatever food John proffers, piddles somewhere that John cannot for the life of him predict or get to in time to block, and then dozes off again.

It’s good that he’s quiet during the night. John suspects that he makes enough noise in his fitful sleep for both of them but he hasn’t told Mrs Hudson about the dog yet. He easily could have; he’s seen her coo at ones walking by the flat out of her window, and she’s soft, kind. He’s sure that she wouldn’t mind.

But he likes having a secret.

Wednesday starts with him waking, suddenly, wrenched back into the middle of might and the echo of his own night terror (bullets, matted black fur and burning eyes, and Sherlock, throwing himself at it from the top of a huge, twisted tree whilst John is chained to a wall and unable to _help_ —) because there is another noise. _Pat-pat pat_ of padded feet against his laminate floor, then a thud as his door thumps open, then-- the dog has jumped and landed on John’s chest, skidding up against his chin.

His jaw clacks shut as he flails backwards, stupidly. “Woah!”

Pushing himself up to sit up against the headboard makes the dog slides down into his lap, tangling up in the thin sheet. It shakes its head free and then sits on his stomach.

Awake, its eyes are very light, very blue.

He looks at it.

He stretches his shoulder, scratches the back of his head where his hair would undoubtedly be sticking up if he hadn’t had it cut so short.

The dog looks back.

John has very deliberately not given it a name, or any directions, or particular care. Treated it more as an experiment. He frowns and points at the floor. “Off.”

It cocks its head, sniff-sniffs. Butts John’s sternum with its squat head.

John smiles, small. Subtle. He reaches out carefully to rub its ear between his thumb and forefinger and it _whines_ , then sighs dramatically and flops down across his belly.

He looks at it for a second, remembering his dream. Then realises he’d forgotten it.

“...Right.”

He goes back to sleep.

The puppy stays a few days more, and then is rehomed in Battersea. Greg tells him later that they called it Amos.

John privately thinks Hamish would have been better, but still, he smiles into his ale.


	4. Chapter 4

**September 2012**

Everywhere that Sherlock goes in Rome is full of tourists.

He loathes it.

There isn’t even any sort of notable event to explain it. This is how the city _exists_. There is simply no excuse for this level of inanity. London is busy enough and yet somehow he never had to walk around someone with a map every day, in the middle of every single road, or crowding into every square. Sherlock is currently disguising himself with a drooping face and a serious limp, so they aren’t exactly slowing him down any more than that, but it is not the point.

Also, he hates pizza.

He knows, shuffling along the Via di San Giovanni, that this is all an irrational response, but ignores it. The limp is reminding him of John, and could quickly become a distraction if he lets it, a literal cripple, which is so ridiculous he wants to garrote himself with a violin string in deference, but true. Since the meeting with Mycroft, his thoughts have often wanted to slip sideways like this, back to old this ground. He has analysed and reduced the last two years in the last few weeks, approaching each day, case, _moment_ from every angle, brought it down to its simplest forms, and still found no satisfactory answer. It is an exercise for his mind. A relief from untangling the knots that Moriarty left, and in its way also a motivation, an escape. Yet, the data is incomplete. They never progressed as far as _needed_ —

So.

Point proven.

Distraction.

He snorts to himself, partially an affected facial tic, partially disgust, and startles a young child sitting outside the café he is passing. _Every disguise is a self-portrait_ , indeed. Better would be, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Or perhaps he simply needed to borrow something stoic, a way of gripping determinedly to something untrue, as he is weary today and did not want to play a part.

He has a woman to meet by the Colloseum at 2pm to discuss an informant in the government, however, and Sherlock Holmes cannot be the one to meet her.

Insane, to parody a psychosis instead of the man. But oddly re-assuring.

His informant is late, but easily gives the name of hers. Sherlock memorises it, pays her in his own information, and limps away.

 

* * *

 

**October 2012**

John is walking along Baker Street when the man a few feet in front sways, staggers sideways to lean against the wall, and then drops as if someone has pushed him violently over.

John is running before he realises. He dodges around a woman with her hands over her mouth and skids to his knees along wet leaves.

The man is gasping, or trying, his hands on his chest, clutching at nothing. Heart attack. It’s not something John has actually ever dealt with before – not a lot of heart attacks mid-battle, not in the literal sense, anyway – but his mind takes over. Stabilise, assess. He shouts at the woman to call an ambulance but she already is, so he arranges the man, checks him, keeps him steady, starts to pump his chest, breathes for him when he slips unconscious. Compressions, breath. Compressions.

He doesn’t notice the crowd, the woman who kneels next to him with a blanket, the sirens of the paramedics arriving. Small hands are laid over his before he looks up.

“We’ve got it, mate,” the paramedic says. She is half John’s age, her hair very blonde. She gives him a half smile. He nods once, moves back to let her duck in and take over.

“He lost consciousness after two minutes, was still breathing for three, and I’ve been working on him for six more since then,” he tells them.

They glance up, back down, nodding along, noting it as from one colleague to another. Then it is a flurry of activity, all at once completely familiar and totally incongruous, taking place as it is on the road outside his door. Checking vitals, getting a line in, getting the defibrillator and shocking the patient. Been there, done that. Just usually a lot. Messier.

They only need to shock him once;  they get a rhythm on the first go. They get the man up onto a stretcher and into the ambulance in the few seconds after. The woman – he wants to say girl, but women - touches his shoulder in acknowledgement as she passes, and the male paramedic claps John on the shoulder before he climbs in.

“Thanks, doc,” he says.

John watches the ambulance drive away and murmurs a few things to the people on the street who come to speak to him. He tells the lady who called the ambulance to have something warm to drink, because she’s gone as pale as the early white autumnal sky is, flagging now that the adrenaline has dropped – and he promises her to do the same. He ensures everyone that he lives close, look, right there, that black door next to the café. And he’s a doctor, he’s fine.  His hands are steady.

Halfway to his front door, he changes his mind and turns around to head for the closest pub.

It takes two whiskeys for him to realise that he doesn’t actually feel bad. He feels. _Good._

That’s the familiar spike of adrenaline, then. Back again. It makes him sad, and happy. Satisfaction, recognition. He is made for this. He’s always known that. It’s a good reminder though. Something he had _before_ Sherlock. Something that was useful, but not cultivated just for London.

He calls the clinic when he gets home, more than a little tipsy, but holds his voice steady enough to pass easily for sober when he tells the receptionist, Julie, that he would like to put himself down for more work.

He also calls and makes an appointment to see his therapist.

That one he blames entirely on the whiskey the next day, but he doesn’t cancel the appointment.

* * *

 

**November 2012**

Twenty nine arrests, links broken, group heads and murderers and bookies and card players scattered across nine countries. Sherlock feels he is moving forward at last.

He allows the sounds of this city to wash over him; the traffic, the shouts, the cold snap in the air, the lights and thrum milling around him like white noise. Here is New York, and he has bank accounts to access.

Moriarty had been nothing if not _flashy_.

Bank vaults this week, with his hair cropped short and black and another false name easily passing his lips; drowning someone in a bath in a blue house in San Francisco last. That, however, was not planned, and as a result he considers the details of this next step with even more than his customary attention. Checking, re-checking, in his hotel. It isn’t paranoia if you are _aware_ of it.

That man is – was – simply a hired gun. An ex-soldier, tattooed idiot, but also the man who was in Mrs Hudson’s house over a year ago with a rifle, posing as a builder.

Sherlock had not planned to kill him. He has never planned the death of anyone. Known how he might do it, yes, but never with the intention of doing so.

He’d gotten his timing wrong. Thought to find the man already in the bath, incapacitate him, and leave him for arrest. Evidently the man – Jeremy Thompson, a bland name for a predictably beige sort of ‘thug’ – was even slower footed than he’d anticipated, as he was still faffing in the bedroom when Sherlock had gained access to his room.

Thompson had had no qualms at all about reaching for the guns he’d left laid out on the bed, just cleaned, in a perfect show of proof for the police that were supposed to be following the trail to him an hour later, and so Sherlock had been forced into an ungainly dive _at_ him, below the trajectory of the bullet. The movement had propelled them both bodily back into the bathroom. 

Thompson had smacked into the rim of the bath with his bare shoulders, arching back over and splashing the water with his head. A bizarre baptism. Sherlock hadn’t been so lucky and instead had cracked the edge of it with his forehead. Luckily his skin hadn’t split, but then it was a dizzy battle of advantage and leverage and desperation with echoes and light bouncing off the tiles, splitting his skull and attention with pain. Thompson’s elbow in his mouth and one part of Sherlock’s mind reeling back, telling him to keep his mouth shut and swallow all of the blood from inside his spit lips so that none spilled, whilst the other part instructed him in an arm around the man’s throat, a knee in his stomach, bend over angle, press down, momentum, and more.

His sleeves had been drenched to the elbow, when the man went slack.

He’d had to leave the semi-dressed body there. He’d nudged the man over face down, but then he was hanging over the edge of the bath as if he was vomiting. Submerged, and already looking bloated. 

Sherlock had been sick himself, in an alley three blocks away. Concussion, in all probability.

Mycroft will have to sort that one out, given that he had to flee the house with none of the information he’d wanted and could do nothing to secure the space. The discovery and the mess will give his brother pause. This amuses Sherlock, at least.

Every time Mycroft has to pause, red lights all over the UK start flashing.


	5. Chapter 5

 

_ All this time _   
_ I've been drawing your lifeline _   
_ As I held your hand in mine_   
_ I've been smoothing out your troubles_   
_ While my own I left behind_

[Lifeline, Ane Brun]

**December 2012**

Christmas is wonderful. Bliss. Sherlock ‘sleeps’ – essentially , he blacks out - face down in the middle of his hotel bed for 19 hours. It’s the most expensive hotel in the Old Town and he hasn’t exactly got a large amount of money left, but here he is posing as a businessman. Appearances must be kept up.

He wakes up halfway through Christmas Eve and reads newspapers for the rest of the day. When he finishes the newspapers he moves onto every magazine and leaflet in the room, and after that he recounts the information, running over every line in his mind and looking for connections or patterns. Finally he reads an appalling novel he stole from the airport, which takes him about 15 minutes on the balcony in a break between snow, the pages lit by the Christmas lights from below, and then line by line he eradicates the information.

He so enjoys this.

Into the gaps he makes he carefully re-weaves other facts. Dates, numbers, percentages. Memories, too. Those he has deemed too important to eradicate, but too sentimental to ever admit to. He has always kept hidden these ones between other things. Layered in the weft of factual data. The William Morris pattern that hung in the kitchen, the way Mother used a cushion from the conservatory to kneel on when she was pruning. The smell of cuttings in a rubbish bag. Grand-mère’s sapphire necklace. His fingers on the faded red velvet lining in his first violin case. Mycroft looking suitably and conspiratorially bored at his graduation. Fat peonies. Cocaine. The exact chemical make-up of John’s brand of deodorant.

Around suppertime he does get an overpowering craving for a mince pie, but he’s in Poland. He could get some in Marks and Spencers – disgustingly - but aside from being far too obvious a place to go for anyone who might wish to trace him here, whilst he unpicks all of the ties of investment Moriarty had set up here through his Vietnamese businesses, the country is mostly a Catholic one. Absolutely _nothing_ is open today, except a petrol station a few roads away with a pimply pubescent sitting in the window.

Sherlock buys a beer, unexpectedly, and some sort of lemon pastry. It is a little stale, but enjoyable.

The drifting noise of Mass from one of the many churches wakes him up later, but the sound is pleasing. He wishes for his violin. For John, to talk to. To see. He needs to busy his hands. He masturbates, a cursory, unimaginative necessity, then washes his face in the bathroom. He considers John, looking at his own features in the mirror; the careful, some would so ‘twatty’ facial hair he has cultivated recently for this character, his currently white-blonde hair, and the reality of himself underneath. Did John like his face? Hard to say. Not wise to think about. Not good.

He spends Christmas day hacking corporate websites and destroying Moriarty’s hold here, randomly shifting power to arbitrary others in the companies and leaving holes to be found, and enjoying the most expensive bottle of Pinot Noir from the bar downstairs. The wine is rich, heavy on his tongue. Entirely worth the money. Wonderful.

New Year’s, in comparison, is beyond dire.

He has to spend it in Norway, which surely must be the coldest place on earth and no-one has actually realised. The added irony of having to go to the most expensive place in Europe exactly as he reaches the point of running out of viable funds is just superb. He can’t even afford a cup of tea now, but he will _not_ go to his brother for help. Disgusting. He is perfectly capable. He couldn’t, wouldn't have changed how things have gone. He hadn’t known exactly where this excursion would take him, only a rough trajectory in his mind of known places and possible schedule. Nor had he had time to plan every detail, even with the foreknowledge that he might have to do something so extreme. He hadn’t known in what order events would unfurl, how long it would all take. Only hopes and whispers and blind, supreme confidence.

He uses his talents to get into an office party in Oslo city centre and rings in 2013 toasting finance with a group of extremely drunk investment bankers. Around 4am, someone mentions the bombings and things get understandably maudlin. He feels uncomfortable. Out of place. Time for ‘Henrik’ to slip away. 

He walks around the city, rather than pay for a hotel. All signs from these bankers point to his next stop being Argentina, then Belarus. The morning will confirm. He’s nearly done. A few more places. He hasn’t had a conversation as _himself_ for 6 months. The necessity of keeping moving so as not to freeze to death is something.

Keep moving.

 

* * *

 

**January 2013**

“So what did you get up to after you left the work do, then?”

Sarah has her back to him whilst she tidies her books, putting papers away. John shrugs even though she can't see him.

“Not much. Called my sister, stopped by a friend’s, and then a quiet drink with Mrs Hudson before bed.”

She turns to look at him bemusedly, hands paused over files. “Thrilling. Remind me how old you are?”

He gives her his dourest expression and hands over the last pile of papers with a flick of his wrist. “With all respect due to my boss, shut up.”

Laughing softly she turns back to continue filing. “Sorry. In all honesty though, it was good to see you out.” She fiddles with papers, swaps things over. John allows himself to scowl at her the fall of her hair down her back, uncomfortable.

“Thank you for the invite.”

“It was a work do, John. No invite really required when you’re on the payroll.”

“And I’m even more touched now.”

She snorts, glancing at him again. “Really, though. It was great to see you out. You. You look good.” That’s kind; his face looks tired but can’t do much about that. She means his body, which remains strong, steady. The fact that he’s functioning acceptably in society. Great stuff.

She turns, folding her arms, leaning back against her neatly ordered books. “I’m happy to see you’re doing well after—” A brief spasm crosses her features; a look he has become familiar with. The _how do I paraphrase lies and suicide?_ face. “After everything.”

“Yes. Thank you.” He coughs, runs a hand along the back of the chair opposite her desk when she just smiles at him, then stands straight. “I’m happy to welcome in a new year.”

“Of course.” She nods, putting her stethoscope in the drawer, and leans to turn off her computer.

He walks with her to her car, then strides on to the bus stop.

Talking about everything leaves him feeling strange. He almost wishes he hadn’t popped in on his way out now, but her teasing _is_ refreshing. He needs normality, sense, boring as it may be. Her manner is straightforward. It’s good for him. Talking about it is good for him, Ella says. What is not good for him is that he also knows, deep down, that Sarah will have taken the reveal of Sherlock’s duplicity with a touch of relief. Her own experiences at the circus had been too crazy for her to deal with then, but now it’s _proved_ to have been unreal. Sherlock’s fault. She has so easily accepted the explanation of it all as a lie because it helps to settle her mind.

He can’t blame her, really. He shouldn’t feel occasionally, savagely hateful about it. She has been very supportive of him. If very occasionally he has to rub a fist against the muscle of his thigh because she might, because of her experience, think that she knows, that she _knows_ _how he feels_ —well.

He doesn’t let it get the better of him.

The work is good; part-time enough to not be too demanding, but enough of a distraction. He’s seeing Ella every two weeks now. She lets him talk through his confusion, trying to find the explanation, the thing he missed. He tries to convince her that it can’t possibly have been a lie, she tries to convince him that it can’t have been anything else.

He misses Sherlock so much it is a physical ache in his sternum. He is also so angry with him, now, that he cannot sleep for it, which an entirely new reason for the intermittent insomnia he’s suffered since June, but the exhaustion is somehow satisfying and he can solve it with physical exertion. Exercise takes his mind away; he rows now just to help himself sleep. Tire his body out enough that he can shut his mind off. He doesn’t need it as he did before, back when he couldn’t think straight through the semi-constant roaring in his ears, and it let him order his thoughts. Now he does that with other people, mostly, and when he’s alone he lets his body take over to the point that it will force him to actually sleep.

That’s progress.

He sees Greg once a fortnight. They meet at a pub, have coffee at his, discuss work. He actually gave advice on a case, last week. Greg hadn’t asked him but when he described the issue, an answer had been in John’s mind. Giving it was horribly uncomfortable and satisfying at the same time. Like Sherlock had sat down next to them and stuck his long fingers down the back of their collars. Greg had thanked him quietly, and clinked his mug against John’s.

He’s even thought about calling Mycroft. He’ll do nothing but shout at him if he does, but it’s a start.

So there’s that.

 

* * *

 

**February 2013**

It won’t be fatal, but the slice definitely would have been slicker and cleaner if not for the blade’s serrated edge. Or his own shard of rusted metal driven up into the woman’s jaw, the wildly precise note that had knocked the woman off balance and twisted her wrist down and away from anything vital.  That’s something to note.

He considers his wound in the angle of light from the lamppost next to the bus shelter, twisting into the corner to look down at the burning slice across his side, his legs still weak and hollow even though he is sitting on the bench. He can see, not to mention feel, where the tip of the knife hit bone. (Ninth rib pair, right side.) There, where the wound twists and trails off in an arc towards his back before dying suddenly. Fireworks at New Year. Snow.

It’s snowing again.

At 3am this carpark is deserted but the woman was not alone. He had lost her companions around the central Metro station a couple of hours before, but he cannot be complacent. He shifts, digging in the plastic bag with one hand for the vodka and the sewing kit, his stolen fur coat bunching uncomfortably behind him. The blood has soaked the fur. It’s turning stiff in the cold.

The glass of the shelter is completely covered in ice flakes, which help to hide him, coupled with the shadow of the museum building. Minsk is grey and black at night, with an undercurrent of bright lights. He blinks the spots from his eyes. He wants a cigarette. The firelight would be a signal, though. His breath comes out as smoke without trying.  

He fumbles with the sewing set, tearing into it with his teeth. They are chattering. It takes six tries to thread the biggest needle. He also possibly considers colour choices for a bit too long. It seems important. Yellow is the wisest choice. Chartreuse, sulphur.

The vodka burns like ice in the wound, making him lose his breath, then he squeezes the skin together and begins to stitch. Colour moves in a bubble of brown-red between his fingertips. He needs to be quick. It won’t be a masterpiece. He is not skilled, at this. He is not— A doctor. He needs to get inside quickly, but he can’t move on until he’s stopped bleeding through his four layers and gasping against buildings as he hobbles away around the city.

There are certain places where he pinches the skin too tightly, and others where he is lapse. Starbursts and trails that are easy to follow. When he’s finished and eyes it critically they look like constellations. Galaxies. He’d learnt some names, after John’s exasperation at his lack of data. _Ursa, Borealis, Sirius_. He can’t remember now. The off-memory jumps to the front of his mind, confusing him. More pressing information has replaced the details, not to mention there is the recent disorganisation in his mind. He’s moved things around to keep the focus in the middle. The centre of the web. Where he wants to keep Moriarty as just a little,  tiny, boxed in inspiration, motivation, but also fears to. Where he is slicing at every strand he can still see.

They can’t heal around him, that’s just his deep, deep fear. Moriarty was not a Hydra, no matter what nightmares Sherlock has. His head didn’t grow back after he’d shot a hole through it.

Sherlock can’t have nightmares if he doesn’t sleep.

* * *

****

**March 2013**

John turns 38 on Saturday. Harry surprises him at his front door early, wearing the rueful expression they share.

“Yo bro,” she says.

He makes a noise of disgust and shuts the door in her face. When he hears her laughter he re-opens it and lets her in, chuckling.

She’s sober. Four months, including New Year. Being proud of her is wonderfully new.

He reads the cards his nephews have signed with scrawls and enormous kisses, smiling to himself, whilst she noses about - raising her eyebrow at the rowing machine, peering out of the high windows to the courtyard, disappearing towards the other rooms.

“It’s bloody freezing outside!” she shouts, from his bedroom. He looks up with a frown, then looks to the ceiling briefly in exasperation at his own stupidity. He’d thought she’d gone to the toilet.

She emerges in one of his jumpers and a pair of his thick socks pulled up over her jeans to the knees. Both swamp her. She’s lost weight. She pokes him in the belly when she passes to put the kettle on.

“Thanks,” he says. He knows her; the gesture was both ironic compliment, and complaint. “You can hardly talk, you know.”

She shrugs, flips a rude gesture at him over her shoulder.

For breakfast they end up eating some of the cake that Mrs Hudson made him, with the radio on in the background. Harry sits on the kitchen table and John in a chair next to her, her feet on the seat of a spare one.

“Your tea is still terrible.” He grimaces over the rim of his mug at her. She laughs over hers, both hands curled around it like Mum used to.

“I know. The boys have surpassed me in that as well.” Her grin turns soft at the end, falls off her face.

He smiles, nodding, and takes one hand off his mug to rub the back of her calf in - not sympathy, exactly, but acknowledgement of a sort.

She stays for four hours and irritates the life out of him; makes him watch a repeat of The One Show, asks him about his therapy, tells him he needs a haircut, wonders if he has any pictures of Sherlock because she only met him the once and doesn’t really remember, and doesn’t back down when he shouts at her about how inappropriate she always bloody has to always bloody _be_. Instead she shouts back that she’d take him to the pub normally but that _would_ be inappropriate, and she doesn’t know what else to do in these situations you know, then gets teary when he asks her about Clara in retaliation - and probably notices that he made that unconscious connection even upset as she is, not crying into his shoulder but holding him very, very tightly when he sighs hard and pulls her into a hug, her fingers stiff in the back of his t-shirt, because then she makes him a ham sandwich whilst he is in the shower. She also bangs on the bedroom door with their Dad on the phone and doesn’t look at his scar when he stumbles out half-dressed to grab the mobile off her – old news now, he is very grateful to her for that – and pulls faces at him whilst he catches up with dad, gets him some kitchen towel when he gets mustard on his wrist because he eats the sandwich too fast, dozes off unexpectedly on the sofa with her feet almost on his thigh, and even lets him check her throat when she says her glands hurt. (She’s fine.)

She kisses his cheek when she leaves. She smells of tea, sugar, and weirdly, his deodorant, but nothing else. No booze. Just her.

It’s wonderful.

* * *

****

**March 2013**

The electric clock by the bed reads 3.17am and the commonly chosen numbers in irritating, lit red enrages Sherlock. _B_ _land_. Not to mention far too obvious. Of course this room would have a clock like that. Of course there would be some attempt to look continental - like the plastic clocks crammed on the wall behind the fold-out table serving as a reception desk, with the hand-drawn labels for Tokyo, Paris and London.Pitiful.

However. Degradation will be his final line of defence. The theory goes thus: the hotel is so obvious that perhaps his pursuer won’t search it, and the desperate disguise he will now attempt will actually work.

He has nothing left to use but 40 minutes in the room, a brand new plug-in razor and an intermittent tremor in his hands that keeps jumping sides, switching from left to right and back. Switching allegiances. At least the aim is clear. Get back to the airport. Get out, get out. And so the hypothesis: hiding in plain sight. _Predictability might be anonymity._ Go unnoticed, mundane.

If it isn’t successful then he will be caught, and then he will be killed. In the real world he’s dead already.

It was strangely easy to adjust to.

He took bleach from the cleaning cupboard on the way up and his coat and shirt are done already; weeks of stains and filth and evidence burning away, with the colour leeched out to leave something off-white now that they sit in the bottom of the shower. The ancient radiator’s rusty loops and spirals tick as they warm up. It’s a tiny, tiny room and the haze of bleach is heady. He ought to open the window but he doesn’t have time to pick the lock that would allow him to open it fully and even if he did, he cannot take the chance of being seen. Inside is safety. Flaking paint, pruned fingertips, limescale on the taps.

He hasn’t taken his shoes off for three days and his bare feet feel. Strange.  
  
The radiator ticks, clanks.  
  
There are marks on his face, scratches on his hands and he knows that there is a bruise in the brutal shape of a kick on his thigh, yet his torso seems untouched underneath the bathroom light. Yes breathing is uncomfortable, moving aches (potentially cracked ribs, lingering chest infection, _ad nauseum_ ) but the surface of his chest looks normal, if he disregards the poorly healing gash across his side. That is usually hidden underneath the bandage that he’s now drying over the shower rail, anyway.

Plastic gloves, disinfectant, bleach, it smells like— it smells like a laboratory, or a morgue. Molly’s morgue. It smells like a dark room. He is an outline, a negative, all white and sepia. Maudlin metaphors at this stage are not a good sign, but. The steam on the mirror doesn’t help his vision. Nor does insomnia. He can see the blur of the blue of veins across his sternum, red dribbles in the whites of his eyes.

It has come to this more quickly than he had anticipated. Just thirteen months into it and he’s down to cheap sunglasses and shaving his head to escape his pursuer. Shameful, truly.

He’s nearly finished, though.

One last thing to do.

_One._

So here he is. The early hours of the morning in a truly vile hotel with rooms for rent by the hour, and a hasty disguise bought in a 24hr supermarket selling mainly things with which one could commit suicide. (Done that, _boring_.) The newspapers in the UK would love it. The decline, the continued fall.

They don’t know the _tasks_ he’s had to do. The work. Always the work. Another part, the next piece—  
  
 _3.20am_ , reflected in the mirror.  
  
The strip-light above it is broken, stuttering like the proverbial moth. Or flame. One of them. Irrelevant. He loathes proverbs and this room is made for _short_ people: the sink is an absurd, infinitesimal thing, positioned far too low for normal homo-sapien. Not to mention that now, with the electric trimmer in one hand and plug in the other, he realises that the cable isn’t long enough. He should have seen that earlier. There won’t be enough reach for him to move freely – he’ll have to twist, lean over as he works across his skull, and he won’t be able to swap hands easily.  He should have thought of this. It’s going to pull his stitches.  
  
He looks down at them.

Oh, inevitability.

He can still, of course - _of course -_ catalogue the wound perfectly. A forensic analyst or a doctor would see immediately. Or John. John would see. John would see that he did a poor job stitching it, admittedly, though that much is obvious - he couldn’t reach around properly to hold it steady, and he was shivering. The job was poor, but holding.  
  
It might have been the catalyst for these tremors in his hands. Perhaps infection, though god knows he poured enough vodka on it, even after he’d stitched it, re-dousing it in the kitchen of the safe house that he’d memorised the address of from a list a computer in New York.

Alternatively, this is shock now. Unresolved shock. Post traumatic. Like John.

He is not in the best way, he knows, but he can still make note of these responses in a professional, un-biased manner, as he has always been able to, even if he hasn’t slept for three weeks, has had fourty-six people arrested in the last thirteen months and has had to kill four people himself. He is in complete control of his mind. He has never wanted to be otherwise.

Drugs were the only thing that ever got him out of his _body_.  
  
He leans to plug the cord in and—The European socket surprises him. He’d thought he was still in Argentina. A second. A second. He’s getting muddled. Minsk, Prague. He’s in _Prague_. Loops, vapour trails. His eyes are sunken and his lower lip is split. _There’s nothing wrong with me_. Memories shimmer like fumes, make him confused. He ducks to turn on the tap, cups a handful of cold water and drinks as much as he dares.

A second.  
  
 _3.23am._

He arranges the plastic bag in the basin to catch his hair, then flicks the razor on. He can already picture the uneven edge his hair will have: in all probability at least 2mm of difference in hair length from left graduating across to right, as his reach and ability wavers. The prediction and knowledge of this flares out in the bathroom. His mind just continues, spins on.

His body hurts _._

Unfortunately, having done a poor job stitching himself back together means that shaving his head pulls at the wound, and pulling fires _agony_ up into his armpit, and this could make him more nauseous than the bleach already has. He cannot afford to vomit again. He doesn’t know what he would bring up, at this point. Last meal? Deleted. Ate and moved on. Move on.  
  
He starts shaving his hair off. His side chants _pain_. His pupils shrink so much that his eyes look white, light.

He detaches himself from it.

Dirty loops of black hair with slightly paler roots fall into the sink; he is mostly disinterested, making loops of logic and alternate realities to bide the time. For example, knowing that his stitches would have been better if he were left-handed, and therefore pain him less, and knowing that this haircut would be better if he were left handed. Knowing that John is left handed but occasionally, surprisingly ambidextrous. Knowing that John is. He knows that John.  
  
 _Is_.

Still is.

Sherlock shaves, until his head feels bare and shocking, like a new soldier’s.


	6. Chapter 6

**April 2013**

It’s 4.30am and he’s not sleeping anymore, so he gets up. He feels— strange. Unsettled. On the corner of Baker Street is an old, homeless man, curled up under a bench with cardboard spread on the slats above him like a roof. He’s been there for four days, and last night when John passed, he’d stuck his head out and shouted _I’m Sherlock Holmes!_

John had flinched around the woman walking towards him, stumbling on his bad leg. He’d got his rhythm back fine, after a moment, but walked away fast.

He fries some eggs for an early breakfast. They’ve just got to the perfect moment to flip, his toast ready and buttered - he is a skilled multi-tasker – when he hears the papers hit the mat outside.

Having them delivered was one decadence that Sherlock had begun that he and Mrs Hudson have continued. Of course, Sherlock often read every single paper the UK printed, so John has reduced it to _The_ _Daily Express_ for her, _The Independent_ for him, plus _The_ _Sunday Times_ for the crossword and yes, he hates himself for it as much as the next person, thanks.

He hovers a moment, spatula in hand, then decides he will dart into the hall to grab them. Nipping back with them in hand he pushes the door shut behind him with his bare foot, only glancing at the headlines on his way to flip the eggs—

**_Richard Brooks a fake – Moriarty was real!_ **

**_Actor was an actor!_ **

**_Extent of criminal mastermind revealed…_ **

**_Suicide of Super sleuth to be reviewed_ **

He stops, staggers two steps sideways, tries to sit down heavily on his kitchen stool but misses and thumps instead down to the floor. He stares at the page.

The eggs sizzle.

Stick.

Start to burn.

 

* * *

 

**April 2013**

Sherlock scrubs the dirt from under his nails using a bottle of water, buffing them on his thigh until his fingertips are raw and pink. The train lurches a little and sends him into the wall, bumping his side. The pain is nothing to what it would have been a month before. He barely notices. He runs a hand over the friction of his returning hair in his new, irritating way, then steeples his fingers under his chin with a scowl, laying back. Why is he fidgeting? He realises that he is _nervous_. He wanted to come back to the country in a better way, but there was no time. Or he couldn’t wait for time. He couldn’t wait any more.

He smiles, only his hands are still shaking. It’s deplorable, but he’s done.

It’s finished _._

He is. _Fantastic_.

A porter – his porter, the one he paid off – leaves a cup of cold tea inside the luggage compartment door for him. He drains it so fast he bites the china rim accidentally. Then he moves again, wedging himself this time between a bike, a stack of 4 identical suitcases and an old fashioned travelling trunk with his feet on a crate, so that he can stare up at the slit of a window and watch the sky change. To England. England.

Unfortunately, however, he falls asleep.

The Porter prods him awake with his foot and hisses at him when he jerks back. “Oi!”

Sherlock looks up, registers that they are no longer moving and breaks into a grin. The Porter leans back, staring at him. Quite possibly he looks mad. He couldn’t say.

“You can smile all you like but if you don’t move quick I’ll have to put you in a suitcase to get you out.”

“Not necessary,” he says, getting up, sweeping his coat around himself. “I’ve had enough of travelling by box.” The man looks curious at that – Sherlock turns back to regard him before he leaves. “And no, you won’t ever know about it so please, do continue to wonder.”

He reaches out and takes the Porter’s hat, jams it on his own head, nods at the man and then climbs out of the carriage door and drops to the floor. It’s been a strangely chill season, he’s been told - Winter is showing no sign of letting up and allowing Spring to take hold yet, but it was cold enough in the luggage carriage that he doesn’t notice much difference even outside.

As soon as he can he drops to the floor and rolls underneath the train to the other side, flat against the gravel and dust, then ducks away.

_Fantastic_.

 

* * *

 

**April 2013**

He is still staring at the paper when Mycroft lets himself in, shutting the door.

Briskly he moves to take the eggs off the heat, putting the pan in the sink and running water into it, filling the flat with steam as well as smoke in the wan light. John’s ears ring but his heartbeat starts to slow down, making him feel less dizzy. Mycroft turns up the extractor fan, opens a window to let in cold air, then crouches and takes John’s arm.

“John,” he says, pulling him.

John gets up, gets to his feet and— fuck. He wrenches himself away. Staggering, he leans back against the counter, bracing himself with arms behind him. He feels bloodless, his face must be bright white. The flat smells like hot oil and something burning, and his pulse twists and rushes through him.

“You knew this was coming.” It isn’t a question.

Mycroft concedes by tilting his head gently, before he crouches carefully, pinching the fabric of his suit trousers at the knees first so that it doesn’t crease, and starts to collect the papers from the floor.

“Yes. Of course I’d rather hoped my efforts would come to fruition earlier.” He sighs, exaggeratedly. “A whole _year_ to clear his name without any scandal to anyone.” He glances up but John watches his hands as he tidies and realises that he is _nervous_. It’s taken him a long time to notice these things with Mycroft. Less time than it did with Sherlock. He doesn’t know what that means.

“You didn’t tell me.” He curls his fingers hard into the worktop. “You could have _warned_ me at least.”

“I came here to do that very thing,” Mycroft says, standing abruptly. Then he starts to fold the papers carefully back together, smoothing the edges, making them crisp as he stacks them on the kitchen table. “I was unaware you were getting up so early still or I would have beaten the news.”

John shakes his head. “God.” He rubs a hand over his face. “How did you— _how_?” He looks out through the high, small window at the bricks and weeds outside, looks at the floor, then twists to grip the edge of the sink and lean over it and breathe. _Think_. His mind races, skips back and forth. “I always knew, but I couldn’t prove it. I. I triedfor months to think of a way. There was nothing.”

“Of course.” A perfect lack of movement behind him. “I simply have better influence than you.”

“Better connections,” he counters, looking over his shoulder. Mycroft pauses, almost imperceptibly, then nods.

“Yes. Well. One that helped.”

“Bollocks.”

Mycroft blinks, and John _knows—_ “No, _bollocks_ , there’s something else going on.” He turns. “It was _real_ but he still, he still killed himself. _Why_?”

Mycroft takes a steady half-step back, giving John room to think, and taking room for himself. “John—”

“What’s going on?” John interrupts, crowding closer. “Tell me what you found out.”

“Everything proven so far is in the papers,” Mycroft begins, but John thumps the table with his fists so hard that the crockery on the drying rack rattles.

“ _Damn you_ Mycroft!”                                                                                                                  

The thump echoes out through the window across the courtyard and bounces back, all tinny. He stares at Sherlock’s brother with the table between them, the headlines stacked on top, his shoulders lifted to his ears in rage and misery. “If you give me your carefully worded government shit,” he continues, quietly, “I will punch you, and you know I will get at least one good one in before you can signal any of your followers.”

Mycroft stands very still with his chin up. John actually really wants to shoot something repeatedly, not hit him, not at all. The thing is that his first thought was that Sherlock might be alive, andthat’s more upsetting  because he _isn’t._

“I cannot tell you anything else.”

“Please.” His thigh trembles. His hands are steady fists.  “Please tell me what you found out.”

There is that pause again, whilst Mycroft holds, thinking of how to word it. How to put it delicately or correctly. Like a doctor before a diagnosis, except that John watches him swallow minutely.

“It didn’t kill him, John,” he says carefully. John’s head spins, his throat closes flat, _what_ , he gathers himself to leap, respond—Mycroft cuts him off. “ _John_ , suicide was…his choice.”

He sags against the table. His head drops, his body bowing.

Mycroft moves around, stopping the tap and turning the extractor fan off, leaving the room abruptly quiet and shocked. He collects his coat from the armchair behind John, hangs it over his arm, then hovers in the doorway. It is very unlike Mycroft to hover. John can’t turn and look at him yet though, feeling the same as the space - abruptly quiet. Shocked.

“It was his choice,” Mycroft repeats from behind John. “Whatever happens, and whatever you may think of me, or him, do not take that away from him.”

He leaves.

John sits.

He waits to hear Mrs Hudson wake up and shriek.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to get this finished so posting it basically as it was written a long time ago! Not as long as originally planned it tp be but since season 3 I have fallen HARD out of love with this show, and I really don't care anymore. APATHY IS EXCELLENT, KIDS

**April 2013**

There is a door through the back of Speedy’s, in the tiny courtyard at the back of the flat where Mrs Hudson’s kitchen window looks out. It’s only used for deliveries, otherwise it’s padlocked twice and has a shutter bolt at the bottom.

Sherlock’s homeless network have been here already, using the key Sherlock got a copy of before he left the country. He waited until 6am as agreed, then slunk around the back of the building like a filthy alley cat.

They were really enjoying seeing him dressed like this, he was sure; sodden shoes, grubby face, and now this awful woollen hat Michelle, the current leader, had given him with a look he hadn’t seen on her sharp features before. He won’t deny it helped warm his head, of course, and it was logical, _of course_ \- he would have found himself one in the end, he isn’t stupid, but he does feel it in this. The cold doesn’t help the chill or the cough he caught in Vienna, either, but he’s had it so long and had to stifle it in so many situations that he doesn’t pay it any mind.

Mycroft does not know that he is back today, only that he should return at some time at the beginning of next week, once the papers have finished the story.

He couldn’t wait.

When he gets to the back door he checks it, concerned, but Michelle did her work. The padlock is looped through the chain but is unlocked, and the bolt has been left undone.

He smiles in the darkness and lets himself into the hallway.

It smells of grease, bacon and coffee. His stomach clenches as he turns and redoes the chain behind him by touch. His heart is beating so hard he can feel it in his shoes. His fingers are shaking. It could be the tremor again.

He shakes his hands out and then turns to face the hallway.

On the left is the door to the kitchen, on the right are steps down to the basement flat. There is a door at the bottom which is technically a fire exit, but he knows for sure that all of the old fashioned bolt locks will be fastened, three times, from the inside.

Wonderful John. Sherlock kept that key back for himself.

He pulls it out of his pocket and rubs it between his fingers, then goes down the steps to slowly unlock the three bolts. He’s planning ahead. The flat will seem like John, and not. A distinct lack of things to give it a half-lived in feel. A jumper thrown on the sofa. Plates in the sink. Lasagne for dinner two days ago, won’t have washed up since. Sherlock will make himself a ham sandwich, then lay carefully on the sofa with his hands on his belly, eyes on the door.

The first lock opens silently, but the second one thunks home so loudly it feels like someone has smashed him over the head with it. He stops, staring at the door in the darkness. Mistake. He should have knocked. _Most people knock._  

He raises his hand to do so, but the lock turns and the door jerks open before he can. Unplanned. Variable. Perfect.

* * *

 

The next noise John hears is not Mrs Hudson, but his door. Rather, the fire exit door at the back that he doesn’t use, that is secured _three times_ \- being unlocked. From the outside.

He snaps around, staring, the breath shoved out of him in a shuddering exhale. _No._

Getting up, he moves fast. Rushing to the door he grabs the last lock, shoving it back, tugging the door open—it— it’s. It _is._ Sherlock.

He’s wearing a ridiculous woollen hat, a long coat. It’s fairly dark in the corridor outside but he is truly there. John looks. He looks. He looks - glorious, and awful, pale bruises under his eyes. Tall and alive. There’s a scab across the top of his ear. Fresh and new.

Acid and bile come up into John’s mouth. He staggers heavily against the door like he’s been shot, his vision blurring. There is an acrid taste in his mouth.

“John.” Sherlock looks down at him, eyes glittering, the corner of his lips tugging into a half smile.

John punches him.

His nose crunches under John’s knuckles, the blood splattering across his face as he reels back. The violent splash of it across his cheek is how he looked last time, John thinks, stupidly, his hand throbbing, sound rushing in his ears.

Sherlock huffs and hunches and the adrenaline floods John, then drains him. His knees go wobbly and he drops to one, catching himself with a hand in front of him on the floor. Head hanging, he breathes, breathes. Focuses on his knuckles. They’re split, with Sherlock’s blood warm across them. John stares, trying to catching his breath, spinning and spinning.

“ _Ow_.” Sherlock’s voice is muffled.

He glances up; the idiot is pinching his nose. John’s _told_ him— No, _no—_  

John waits 56 thudding seconds (counting time after an explosion is a soldier’s habit) before Sherlock puts a hand carefully on John’s shoulder. He never touches first, normally. Didn’t. Does. John makes a long, strange sound and jerks away.

“Take that off me,” he bites out. Sherlock does. John gasps a little, tipping from his hands and knees onto his haunches, then swaying up to his feet. He totters back, Sherlock still in the doorway, backing into the sofa and sitting on the edge of it. For a moment Sherlock looks like he will follow, but instead he picks on a social undercurrent, for once, and pauses with a foot poised, on the threshold, annoyingly balletic even with his dirty coat and strange pupils. John winces at him.

“It’s an excellent story—” Sherlock begins, and John hisses at him, “ _Really_  .”

“…Ah. Yes. Perhaps.”

John wipes a clammy hand across his forehead, and swallows down whatever it is that is lodged in his throat. His pulse is still roaring, but somewhat lesser so, at least. “Sh-Sherlock. I. …It’s definitely possible I may punch you again.” He crosses his arms, in certainty. “You should know that.”

“Of course.”

“Can you _actually_ explain?” he whispers.

Sherlock considers that. “Would you actually like me to?”

Good point. John wants to— John. Wants. He wants.

“Come in,” he says.

Sherlock does.


End file.
